Tonight all four of us ate dinner together for the first time. Lucas joined us for some real food – bananas. He’s interested in food – very interested if you can judge by these signs: excited breathing, reaching for the spoon, and grabbing whatever he gets, wide open mouth and a bit of drooling. Once food is in his mouth, he’s not so sure what to do with it. ‘Food Eating 101’ here we go.
Kayla is getting ahead…ache.
We had read that Kayla will soon be climbing on things (which she’s mastered) and attempting to scale her crib walls. This normally happens at about this time, but she is 4 inches shy of the “36 inches required for a successful crib escape.” We had her mattress in the lowest setting, and assumed we needn’t worry yet. After all, it’s only her head that is significantly larger than normal.706
We are not exactly certain how she managed it but after hearing the cry, mommy returned to find her standing beside the crib, a bit distraught. Did she scale the crib walls? Did she use her head as a counterweight? There were no bumps or bruises. That was Wednesday. Figuring that she almost certainly has climbing in her blood, the only sensible thing to do was move her mattress to the floor. Today we picked up her new toddler bed which she thinks is quite dandy.
About the iPhone
Hey Jay, this post is for you. đ
First, let me be perfectly clear. The iPhone is an extraordinarily wonderful technical achievement. iLust. What was unusual about this years Macworld keynote is that my wife started watching the keynote as well. And she was interested.
The truly striking part was watching Jobs actually use the iPhone. There were very different aspects about the phone that wowed her and others that wowed me. The ease of using all the devices is likely the phones most endearing feature, but I’m not in love. Yet. First, my list of pros, cons, and questions:
Pros:
Ease of use.
Multi-touch
Wide screen iPod!
Switch between portrait and landscape via accelerometer
Sync contacts from Mac or PC
Fully functional web browser (yes, I have Opera on my mobile)
Text message context bubbles (ala iChat)
WiFi
Cons:
Painfully slow data access (EDGE).
Cingular only
No tethering (with a PDA / laptop)
Expensive.
Concerns:
SSH client (this is a must have)
Does email support multiple IMAP accounts?
Is there support for IMAP SSL/TLS encryption?
The Google Maps did not have traffic info in the demo, but is a claimed feature.
I will not be buying a v1.0 iPhone for two reasons. The first is past bad experiences with Cingular, and the second is lack of useful data plans. One of the “killer apps” for me and my mobile phone is being able to tether with my laptop and have the ability to manage my internet based business anywhere, anytime. Until Cingular has HSPDA rolled out to the degree that Sprint and Verizon have EVDO available, Cingular is not even a consideration.
When the 2nd generation of iPhones hit the market and include 3G mobile networking, I will consider the iPhone if Apple adds tethering support. I care little about the visual voice mail (its my mobile, I normally answer it) and the push IMAP. I’d much rather have an unlocked 3G phone I can use on the carrier of my choice (Sprint).
For myself, the iPhone is not quite “there” yet. But, that only accounts for me. The iPhone might just be the perfect phone for my wife.
How secure are your doors?
I recently learned a few things about home security. Some of the highlights are
* most doors can be busted open with one solid kick
* deadbolts offer little additional protection against kick ins
* 99% of deadbolts can be drilled through in under 2 minutes
* most deadbolts can be sawed through in a couple minutes
* a blunt instrument (hammer) and a screwdriver can quickly defeat cheap deadbolts
* most deadbolts can be picked in less than 2 minutes
* average time to break into a house is under two minutes
* two categories of burglars: skilled w/tools, and opportunists
If the burglar is skilled and has tools, he will get into the majority of houses within two minutes. Short of spending thousands of dollars on security, there is little you can do to prevent it. However, what you can do is make sure your house is secure enough to keep out the opportunists for at least two minutes. By doing so, they’ll continue down the street looking for an easier target.
According to Consumer Reports, “Nearly two thirds of all burglaries involve forced entry, and they succeed partly because of flimsy door locks and mounting hardware.” In doing tests that involved kicking, drilling, sawing, hammering, and other attempts to defeat locks, they found that simply replacing the screws provided with cheap door locks with 3″ screws “significantly” strengthened them. I suggest also replacing the screws in your door hinges with longer screws that will penetrate at least 1″ into the door framing.
It makes good sense that you should use screws long enough to go through the prehung door frame and into the framing. However, if you really want to raise the bar, then spend $10 for a M.A.G. Security Strike-3 Deadbolt Frame Reinforcer (747-B). Next to using longer screws, this delivers more security for your dollar than anything else. I bought them for all three of my entry doors. It takes a bit of drilling and chiseling to install but I am considerably more confident in my doors now.
I had embarked on my journey of door security because our existing locks were rude, inconvenient, and annoying. Upon insertion of a key, they were loathe to return it. I was also suspicious of their integrity. Last, they were not keyed alike. I’d often be unable to get in the nearest door because I didn’t have the right key. Those combined to inspire me to replace them all. Unable to find a decent set at nearby retailers, I went online and started searching.
I found useful information from a couple homeowners insurance companies, Consumers Reports, and The National Locksmith. Both CR and TNL had nice pictures of busting down doors and how they fail. After replacing my deadbolt latches with strike boxes, the next weakest link was my locks and deadbolts. Thankfully, CR tested enough locks to make that choice easy; pay $160 each per deadbolt for the top of the line stuff, or $25 for second best. Second best is good enough for me. The only challenge was finding them. The better lockset makers only sell through locksmiths.
Replacing the deadbolts is quite an easy job, easily within the grasp of anyone with a screwdriver and the ability to read. However, what can be a bit more challenging is adding a deadbolt to doors that don’t have them. In my case, the entry door between the garage and house did not have a deadbolt. I chose to add one because I had noticed that someone attempted to break into my garage while we were at the hospital for Lucas’ birth. A few days later, I was chatting with my neighbor who was repairing his garage door after an attempt had been made on it as well. Both our garage doors were good enough to dissuade an opportunist.
I learned that a significant portion of burglaries that are not forced entries are the result of entering through unlocked garage doors. If someone does get past my garage door, I want to stop them there. I used my drill and Rotozip to cut a round hole through the steel door and installed a deadbolt on that door as well. Now we actually use the lock on that door since it has a matching key. This is a very important aspect of home security. If using the locks is a pain, they won’t get used. If they aren’t used regularly, they are no better than not having them. Now we have three doors, with five locks and 1 key.
I also looked into keyless locks as well, using a variety of mechanisms. All the keyless locks CR tested were lacking in basic security. The more I read, the it appears that there is not a good residential grade keyless lock available. Even the best offer less security than a good $25 deadbolt. The Mythbusters guys did a nice set of experiments on the best of the biometric locks and were able to defeat every one of them quickly and reliably. While they are convenient and appear high tech, they offer less security than the basic keyed lock at a much higher cost.
The last product I learned about is the door wrap plates. They are C shaped brass plates with pre-drilled holes for your deadbolt and lockset. The plates wrap around your door and you mount the locks through the holes in it. The plates are a reinforcement for the door itself. They add security by making it significantly more difficult to bust the door and thereby defeat the locks. They only cost $15 each, the challenge was finding a place to buy them. I’ve had them on order for three weeks now. Should they ever arrive, I’ll take a few photos of the results.
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What were they thinking?
Riddle me this; assume that you are the worlds largest Operating System vendor. One of your core markets, and the one generating the profit that keeps your entire operations rolling in cash, is sales to businesses (and governments). You work in marketing and hired a research company to determine the impact if businesses were to upgrade to the latest version of your OS. When the results of the report come back, they reflect a strong negative impact. Do you:
a) Cram the report in a barrel and bury it with nuclear waste in Nevada
b) Forward the results to your boss and let him/her decide
c) Spin the results as a job creation benefit to the US economy
Apparently someone at Microsoft thought c) was a good idea and published a report concluding that Vista would create 100,000 new jobs in the USA and 50,000 more in Europe. Now, if you were in charge of keeping IT costs down in your organization and read this, how excited would you be about upgrading?
That’s almost as embarrassing as two Word exploits that let remote attackers hijack your entire PC, or having your development chief say, I would buy a Mac if I didn’t work for Microsoft, or getting caught stealing icons off your competitors web site.
Are Apple’s “picky” about RAM?
Scot Finnie, a “Windows Expert” wrote an article for Computerworld in which he describes his 3 month experiment using only a MacBook Pro. One of the comments he makes is,
I haven’t had a spontaneous reboot since the moment I pulled the [bad] RAM SIMM, the second day I had the machine. It’s been about six weeks. Apple computers are picky about RAM.
What surprised our dear friend Scot is that Apple hardware seems to care about the quality of RAM it is given. He is of course, correct. However, what he fails to note is that EVERY computer is quite finicky about RAM. Bad RAM will cause any Operating System running on any hardware to behave in undesirable ways.
During the legacy Mac OS days, when stability on Mac or Windows was not a thing to be depended upon, I remember joining a mailing list specific to BSD UNIX, which I was getting acquainted with. Another list member described a type of crash his system was experiencing. I thought it a bit presumptive when others pointed out his problem was almost certainly bad RAM. It was as if they were saying, “the problem is not our OS, it’s your hardware that is junk!” That scenario played out dozens more times during the years, as guys with only PC experience ventured into the land of UNIX where servers run for years and hardly ever crash.
The difference is one of perspective and requires a paradigm shift. Scot’s experience is one where frequent crashes are still commonplace. Now Scot has tasted a computing environment where six weeks, or six months without a reboot is common. It’s not that Apple computers are more picky about RAM. It is that you tend to notice when your system goes from rock solid dependable to sporadically crashing, which it had never done before. Scot, we welcome you to a brave new world.
PS: NewEgg has great prices, great service, and ample options for buying RAM for any computer.
Kayla is 18 months!
Adorable. Cute. Sassy. Fun.
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I’m sure she does not see the irony of her, with a head that measures off the charts (greater than 100th percentile), wearing my cap that says, “fatbrain.com.”
Totally scrumptious!
For all of you not married to a food-loving, systematic, engineer of a husband, you have my condolences.
Over the last month or so, my husband has methodically tested many pancake recipes in search of the ‘perfect’ pancake. And he has achieved it. He altered recipes one ingredient at a time to learn each ones affect on the overall finished good and now has come up with a totally scrumptious whole wheat banana buttermilk pancake. Fluffy, soft, moist and truly tasty!
Testers of course include Kayla who gives this version the big “mmmmmm” when she sees it come off the griddle. Matt treated me to a blueberry version of this pancake for breakfast recently (fruit infusion is my ultimate test) and I gave the finished product 5 stars.
Score one more for my husband and his determined approach to making something downright tasty!
compressed air is so passe
Every geek worth his salt is bound to get requests to fix aged and ailing computers. A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, dropped his ancient Dell off in the hopes that I could salvage some of the files off the disk. A few months ago it had crashed so he reinstalled the OS, and got a few more months use before it crashed really hard.
In such cases, I don’t even bother using the ancient computer. I just yank the disk and attach it to my computer using a FireWire ATA bridge. Then I can probe, test, and hopefully extract information from the disk. This is obviously much faster than working with a relic. This evening I pulled the unnamed person’s Dell out from under my desk and removed the lid. The greeting I got was a little unsavory.
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As the inside of computers go, this is not the worst I have seen. Most folks don’t bother to clean their engine before taking their car to a mechanic and they don’t bother to clean their computer before taking it to a technician. My intent in disassembly was simply to remove the drive, which you can see in the lower right hand side of the photo.
To remove the drive, there are two screws beneath the front panel that must be removed. I was thinking I could get the drive out without liberating too much of the dust, but I was wrong. Very wrong. When I partially removed the front cover, my wife, who happened to be watching the dissection, interrupted. With good cause, she insisted I put it back together and take it outside the clean it off.
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Other than age, can anyone at home guess why the drive failed?
I heeded Jen’s advice and took the computer out into the driveway to clean it out. I keep cans of compressed air in the garage for just this purpose. Then inspiration struck. I had just, in the previous 10 minutes, come down off the roof after blowing all the leaves out of my gutters. If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, I need not explain any further.
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and then they were four.
Before committing any impressions of dear little Lucas to print, I wanted some time to elapse. Words committed to print can take on a life of their own so I wanted the birthing dust to settle, external pressures to abate, and just feel a tad more normal before making proclamations.
We are now three and half weeks into Lucas’ life and much about this little man is clear. I find it easiest to explain via contrast. If you might recall, we commented profusely on how wonderful and easy to raise Kayla was. We received a number of baby books, and we bought a few more. We read them and created a synthesis of how we wanted to parent. Most everything we tried “just worked.”
It would have been easy to succumb to The Great Parenting Lie, that it was easy because we are such great parents. However, many a conversation with other parents had prepared us for what the future could hold. Now that that future is the present, the words of wisdom bestowed upon us are embodied in a mass of flesh that can best be described with a single word, needy.
Mind you, I am not complaining. We really do love this little destructor of our tranquility. By comparison to Kayla, there is little comparison. A typical feeding for Kayla was quite easy by most any standard; wake her, insert nipple (natural or synthetic), let her eat until satiated, burp her, keep her awake for an hour, swaddle her and put her back to sleep. Feedings could often be done in 30-45 minutes. Then we had that 1 1/2 hours of blissful peace and calm afterwards. Sweet blessed calm.
With Lucas, everything takes much longer. Waking him enough to eat is a 15 minute ordeal. So far the most successful technique is to uncover him and wait until he gets cold enough to stay awake. Feeding is sporadic, sometimes he eats well and at other times he fusses all the way through. He clings to his burps as if they are part of his dinner that we are trying to take away. Burping often takes 10 minutes.
He has caused us to use words in new ways. For example, we have seldom before farted something, but Lucas needs regular farting. When he wakes up crying at 3AM, we grab his legs and push them up to his chest and he breaks wind. We repeat the cycle and so does he. Sometimes a dozen times. Genetics predisposes him to having a highly active gastrointestinal system and his reticence to belch compounds the issue.
Warming him is best achieved with direct skin contact. Pick him up and hold him and he melts onto us. If it is the least bit chilly, he burrows in burying his head against our neck. We noticed his burrowing nature in the hospital. Even swaddled, he’d find a way to burrow down into his blankets. We could sell Lucas Technology[TM] to the military for use in heat seeking devices. During his warm up, he will invariably drift off to sleep. The problem is that he won’t stay asleep.
It is bitter irony. At 18 months, Kayla is in a stage where snuggling with her is vigorously protested. She is quite independent and has her very own conceptions of order in the universe. Lucas is simply carnal. It warms the heart. We enjoy our snuggle time. But all is not well in the land of snuggles. After he falls asleep, we put him down and within 5 minutes he is awake again. Pick him up, snuggle, and he goes back to sleep. It is all so sweet that he responds to us, but not at midnight, 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, 5 AM, and 6AM.
Because this little man is so carnal, we have tried co-sleeping a few times. The bad news is that he absolutely loves it and sleeps extremely well in our bed. His favorite is either on my chest or between us with my hand atop his head. However, when co-sleeping, neither parent gets any deep sleep. Between the fear of suffocating him and all the little noises he makes, it simply is not possible to drift completely away. This accords with my deep seated feelings that our bed is hallowed ground, not to be encroached upon. Yet, we need a solution. Tomorrow we might be searching online for a bassinet sized electric blanket.
So, if you wonder why there are so few pictures and posts, it is because one of us is preoccupied with a needy little baby. The other is caring for Kayla, making meals, buying groceries, and otherwise tending to the care of our home.